This imitation Corixa has met with a very general condemnation as not being a lure which should be allowed on waters where the use of the fly only is permitted. As this child of my fancy has cost me many hours of careful thought and labour, I am inclined, with all due deference to these opinions, expressed by men of much greater experience than mine, to say a few words in its defence.
Corixæ are insects which live in the water and are eaten by trout. They possess wings which they use frequently, sometimes flying a considerable distance, and I have seen trout take them just as they were trying to leave the surface of the water. The efficacy of the imitation, therefore, depends upon the skill of the fisherman, who must make it simulate in its movements the movements of the natural insect. Mr. G. A. B. Dewar, in his Book of the Dry Fly, in speaking of “tailing” trout, which are probably feeding on "food of the shrimp and snail order,“ advises that they should be fished for "with a long line down stream, and the fly worked with a series of little jerks, somewhat as in salmon-fishing. The fly should be cast just above where the head of the trout is adjudged to be, and worked into the angler’s bank, and it must never be kept still, otherwise the fish will at once perceive the deception and at once decline it.” Mr. Dewar then mentions a dry-fly angler of great skill who is very successful in fishing in this manner with a big Alder. It is more than probable that in these cases the Alder is taken for a Corixa, or something very like it, as the colour, size, and movements are somewhat similar.
The Marquis of Granby, in the preface to Mr. Dewar’s book, also speaks highly of a sunk alder for “tailing” trout.
“To kill ‘tailers’ in broad daylight and in low water is quite an art in itself,” is another quotation from The Book of the Dry Fly upon this mode of fishing, and though the author points out that this is not true dry-fly fishing, still if the fisherman’s conscience allows him to use a sunk Alder down stream and worked in this manner, I think it should also allow him to use an imitation Corixa under similar circumstances.
I should not have dragged the writings of others into such a question as this, had not the criticisms upon my flies been an indirect attack upon myself, as what has been said about them practically means that they ought not to be used by any one who calls himself a sportsman. If this is true of the flies, what could not be said of their inventor? For this reason I take the best means I can find to defend myself, and what better defence could there be than the published practices of two men whose sportsmanlike qualities have never been doubted?
What is legitimate trout-fly has, I believe, never been clearly defined; but I hope I shall not be presuming too much in saying, that if the lure in question is the imitation of an insect which can and does fly, made of the ordinary materials used in fly-making upon one hook, this lure has a perfect right to be called a legitimate trout-fly.
It will be found that my Corixa fulfils these conditions.
There is one thing that I wish particularly to impress upon my reader, and this is that, in using the imitations of Corixæ and Fresh-water Shrimps, he should find out whether these creatures inhabit the water he is fishing. If he does not do this and fishes with the imitations of either of them where they do not exist, he will probably meet with failure and disappointment.